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Concepts Taoist philosophy Tao De Wuji Taiji Yin and yang Bagua Wuxing (five phases) Bianhua Fan (reversal) Wu wei (non-action) Ziran Xian (immortal) Zhenren True form Three Treasures Jing Qi Shen Hun and po
Practices Three Treasures (virtues) Five Precepts Ten Precepts Meditation Alchemy Neidan Waidan Bugang Chu Diet (Bigu) Sexual practices Art Fulu Priesthood
Texts I Ching Tao Te Ching Zhuangzi Huainanzi Taipingjing Xiang'er Liezi Sanhuangjing Huahujing Qingjing Jing Baopuzi Daozang
Theology Hongjun Laozu Three Pure Ones Yuanshi Tianzun Lingbao Tianzun Daode Tianzun Four heavenly ministers Jade Emperor Ziwei Emperor Tianhuang Emperor Houtu Queen Mother of the West King Father of the East Three Great Emperor-Officials Eight Immortals Chang'e Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors Yellow Emperor Guan Yu Li Hong Body god
People Laozi Zhuang Zhou Lie Yukou Heshang Gong Wei Boyang Zhang Daoling Gan Ji Zhang Jue Zhang Lu Ge Xuan He Yan Wang Bi Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove Guo Xiang Sun Hanhua Wei Huacun Ge Hong Bao Jingyan Kou Qianzhi Lu Xiujing Tao Hongjing Cheng Xuanying Chen Tuan Zhang Boduan Sun Bu'er Wang Chongyang Qiu Chuji Zhang Guoxiang Zhang Sanfeng Zhu Quan Fangshi
Schools Huang–Lao Way of the Taiping Xuanxue Shangqing School Way of the Li Family Lingbao School Chongxuan School Quanzhen School Dragon Gate) Wuliupai Way of the Celestial Masters Way of the Five Pecks of Rice The Southern Celestial Masters The Northern Celestial Masters Zhengyi Dao Chinese ritual mastery traditions Yao Taoism
Sacred places Grotto-heavens Sacred Mountains of China Wudang Mountains Mount Penglai Mount Kunlun Taoist temple White Cloud Temple Louguantai Cebu Taoist Temple Taoist Temple (Hanford, California)
Institutions and organizations Chinese Taoist Association Celestial Masters Taoist priests

Classical elements
Hellenistic Air Water Aether Fire Earth
Hinduism / Jainism / Buddhism Vayu Ap Akasha Agni Prithvi
Chinese Wood (木) Water (水) Fire (火) Metal (金) Earth (土)
Japanese Wind (風) Water (水) Void (空) Fire (火) Earth (地)
European alchemy Air Water Fire Aether Earth Sulphur Mercury Salt

Wuxing (Chinese: 五行; pinyin: wǔxíng),^[a] usually translated as Five Phases or Five Agents,^[2] is a fivefold conceptual scheme used in many traditional Chinese fields of study to explain a wide array of phenomena, including cosmic cycles, the interactions between internal organs, the succession of political regimes, and the properties of herbal medicines.

The agents are Fire, Water, Wood, Metal, and Earth.^[b] The wuxing system has been in use since it was formulated in the second or first century BCE during the Han dynasty. It appears in many seemingly disparate fields of early Chinese thought, including music, feng shui, alchemy, astrology, martial arts, military strategy, I Ching divination, and traditional medicine, serving as a metaphysics based on cosmic analogy.

Wuxing originally referred to the five major planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, Mars, Venus), which were with the combination of the Sun and the Moon, conceived as creating five forces of earthly life. This is why the word is composed of Chinese characters meaning "five" (五; wǔ) and "moving" (行; xíng). "Moving" is shorthand for "planets", since the word for planets in Chinese literally translates as "moving stars" (行星; xíngxīng).^[6] Some of the Mawangdui Silk Texts (before 168 BC) also connect the wuxing to the wude (五德; wǔdé), the Five Virtues and Five Emotions.^[7][8] Scholars believe that various predecessors to the concept of wuxing were merged into one system with many interpretations during the Han dynasty.^[9]

Wuxing was first translated into English as "the Five Elements", drawing deliberate parallels with the Greek arrangement of the four elements.^[10][8] This translation is still in common use among practitioners of Traditional Chinese medicine, such as in the name of Five Element acupuncture.^[11] However, this analogy is misleading. The four elements are concerned with form, substance and quantity, whereas wuxing are "primarily concerned with process, change, and quality".^[12] For example, the wuxing element "Wood" is more accurately thought of as the "vital essence" of trees rather than the physical substance wood.^[13] This led sinologist Nathan Sivin to propose the alternative translation "five phases" in 1987.^[14] But "phase" also fails to capture the full meaning of wuxing. In some contexts, the wuxing are indeed associated with physical substances.^[15] Historian of Chinese medicine Manfred Porkert proposed the (somewhat unwieldy) term "Evolutive Phase".^[15] Perhaps the most widely accepted translation among modern scholars is "the five agents", proposed by Marc Kalinowski.^[16]

In traditional doctrine, the five phases are connected in two cycles of interactions: a generating or creation (生 shēng) cycle, also known as "mother-son"; and an overcoming or destructive (克 kè) cycle, also known as "grandfather-grandson" (see diagram). Each of the two cycles can be analyzed going forward or reversed. There is also an "overacting" or excessive version of the destructive cycle.^{[citation needed]}

The generating cycle (相生 xiāngshēng) is:

• Wood feeds Fire
• Fire produces Earth (ash, lava)
• Earth bears Metal (geological processes produce minerals)
• Metal collects Water (water vapor condenses on metal, for example)
• Water nourishes Wood (Water flowers, plants and other changes in forest)

The reverse generating cycle (相洩/相泄 xiāngxiè) is:

• Wood depletes Water
• Water rusts Metal
• Metal impoverishes Earth (erosion, destructive mining of minerals)
• Earth smothers Fire
• Fire burns Wood (forest fires)

The destructive cycle (相克 xiāngkè) is:

• Wood grasps (or stabilizes) Earth (roots of trees can prevent soil erosion)
• Earth contains (or directs) Water (dams or river banks)
• Water dampens (or regulates) Fire
• Fire melts (or refines or shapes) Metal
• Metal chops (or carves) Wood

The excessive destructive cycle (相乘 xiāngchéng) is:

• Wood depletes Earth (depletion of nutrients in soil, over-farming, overcultivation)
• Earth obstructs Water (over-damming)
• Water extinguishes Fire
• Fire melts Metal (affecting its integrity)
• Metal makes Wood rigid to easily snap.

A reverse or deficient destructive cycle (相侮 xiāngwǔ or 相耗 xiānghào) is:

• Wood dulls Metal
• Metal de-energizes Fire (conducting heat away)
• Fire evaporates Water
• Water muddies (or destabilizes) Earth
• Earth rots Wood (buried wood rots)

In Ziwei divination, nayin (納音) further classifies the Five Elements into 60 ming (命), or life orders, based on the ganzhi. Similar to the astrology zodiac, the ming is used by fortune-tellers to analyse individual personality and destiny.

The wuxing schema is applied to explain phenomena in various fields.

The five phases are around 73 days each and are usually used to describe the transformations of nature rather than their formative states.

• Wood/Spring: a period of growth, expanding which generates abundant vitality, movement and wind.
• Fire/Summer: a period of swollen, flowering, expanded with heat.
• Earth can be seen as a period of stillness transitioning between the other phases or seasons or when relating to transformative seasonal periods it can be seen as late Summer. This period is associated with stability, leveling and dampness.
• Metal/Autumn: a period of harvesting, transmuting, contracting, collecting and dryness.
• Water/Winter: a period of retreat, stillness, consolidation and coolness.

The art of feng shui (Chinese geomancy) is based on wuxing, with the structure of the cosmos mirroring the five phases, as well as the eight trigrams. Each phase has a complex network of associations with different aspects of nature (see table): colors, seasons and shapes all interact according to the cycles.^[17]

An interaction or energy flow can be expansive, destructive, or exhaustive, depending on the cycle to which it belongs. By understanding these energy flows, a feng shui practitioner attempts to rearrange energy to benefit the client.

According to the Warring States period political philosopher Zou Yan (c. 305–240 BCE), each of the five elements possesses a personified virtue (德; dé), which indicates the foreordained destiny (運; yùn) of a dynasty; hence the cyclic succession of the elements also indicates dynastic transitions. Zou Yan claims that the Mandate of Heaven sanctions the legitimacy of a dynasty by sending self-manifesting auspicious signs in the ritual color (yellow, blue, white, red, and black) that matches the element of the new dynasty (Earth, Wood, Metal, Fire, and Water). From the Qin dynasty onward, most Chinese dynasties invoked the theory of the Five Elements to legitimize their reign.^[18]

The interdependence of zangfu networks in the body was said to be a circle of five things, and so mapped by the ancient Chinese doctors onto categories of syndromes and patterns called the five phases.^[19][20]

In order to explain the integrity and complexity of the human body, Chinese medical scientists and physicians use the Five Elements theory to classify the human body's endogenous influences on organs, physiological activities, pathological reactions, and environmental or exogenous (external, environmental) influences. This diagnostic capacity is extensively used in traditional five phase acupuncture today, as opposed to the modern Confucian styled eight principles based Traditional Chinese medicine. Furthermore, in combination the two systems are a formative and functional study of postnatal and prenatal influencing on genetics, psychology, sociology and ecology.^[21][22][23]

The Huainanzi and the Yueling chapter (月令; Yuèlìng) of the Book of Rites make the following correlations:

• Qing is a Chinese color word used for both green and blue. Modern Mandarin has separate words for each, but like many other languages, older forms of Chinese did not distinguish between green and blue.^[25]
• In most modern music, various five note or seven note scales (e.g., the major scale) are defined by selecting five or seven frequencies from the set of twelve semi-tones in the Equal tempered tuning. The Chinese shi'er lü system of tuning is closest to the ancient Greek tuning of Pythagoras.^[26]

Wuxing being an influential philosophical concept, there are several Chinese martial arts and a few other east Asian styles that incorporate five phases concepts into their systems.

Taiji Quan trains and focuses on five basics qualities as part of its overarching strategy.^[18]

The Five Steps (五步; wǔ bù) are:

• Lǎo Jinbu (老进步) – always step forward
• Jué bù Tuibu (絕不退步) – never step backward
• Youpan (右盼; yòupàn) – watch right
• Zuogu (左顾; 左顧; zǔogù) – beware left
• Zhongding (中定; zhōngdìng) – center point, neutral posture, maintain balance, maintain equilibrium

These five steps are not mutable states in Taiji Quan. Rather they are step in a process of refining a good combatant, qualities who's presence or absence are what cause perturbations, blockages, or reversals of the energy of one's own body or the energy of one's techniques. This view is more like how the energies of the organs are balanced in Chinese medicine. The idea is not to manifest a specific energy, but to maintain even, steady, and harmonious circulation between all the requirements so there is continuous and uninterrupted flow of action.

As for the elemental qualities of the five traditional qualities:

1. 'Always Advancing' has the quality of wood.
   • It is always growing outward, adding new layers onto the previous shell.
   • This constant advancing eats up the opponent's space, smothers them, and breaks their posture.
   • If the opponent pulls back, rush in to capitalize on their momentum.
2. 'Never Retreating' has the quality of metal.
   • Like the density of metal, the idea is to consolidate and secure one's gains.
   • Not pulling the hand back keeps one's shields up and prevents the opponent from intruding.
3. 'Watch Right' has the quality of water.
   • Most people are right handed, and unless taught otherwise, they lead with this hand for grabbing and striking.
   • Of the two hands, it is the lead hand that is most likely to make contact with the opponent, thus martially the lead hand is used to tear open the opponent's guard, pull them off balance, or guide the opponent's hands away from the user's body.
   • Ideally, the lead hand should perform all three negating actions at once: tearing open, pulling down, and leading away.
4. 'Beware Left' has the quality of fire.
   • Whenever the lead hand retreats, this provides reciprocal force and the body flings open, shooting out the rear hand.
5. 'Neutral Point' has the quality of earth.
   • It is the stability that allows for the other elements to manifest, it is the pivot that allows the others to cycle around it.
   • Physically it is the balanced and stable posture that allows one to act of one's own volition.
   • With unstable balance, one is in a state of trying to catch oneself and is vulnerable.
   • With an unstable frame, any action by oneself or the opponent is liable to break either you balance, or your posture which opens you up to attack.

A slightly different interpretation of the five elements in Taiji Quan deal more specifically with the body method:

• Wood - with the extremities (hands and feet) stretching outward toward the extremes
• Metal - and the mid joints (knees and elbows) bowing down and out, or the mid joints pointing toward the core to shrink and densify the body.
• Earth - The head is the "heavenly root" and must remain plumb and fixed relative to the rest of the body for one to move freely, and for the rest of the body to move relative to.
• Fire - is the fighting spirit rising up through the body through the spine, preparing one for vigorous and immediate action.
• Water - is the calming energy that pours down the front of the body, keeping one calm and focused, and not overly excited.

Due to the occultation and misunderstanding of the original methods, modern Taiji Quan practice tends to have a mental framework that these elements are individual qualities to be developed individually. Thus:

• wood energy is be solid and expanding, growing into the opponent's frame and collapsing theirs.
• water energy to recede, match, and engulf the opponent, usually drawing them off balance or into your space when you may attack.
• fire energy is bursting forward with whole body strength. This is the energy of striking, and is rarely trained.
• metal energy to be heavy and dense, usually shrinking with whole body strength. This is proportional to earth energy but is used more actively to drop, be heavy, and suppress.
• earth energy to be immovable, braced, and stake-like. It is used passively to glance away, uproot, and reflect incoming power.

With water energy being traditionally the most famous and developed energy, the water element tends to get practiced to the detriment and exclusion of the others in many branches. More conservative branches also actively cultivate the earth element, giving the style's famous stability and strong frame. The metal energy tends to get lumped in with the water energy, receding and dropping simultaneously. Though some schools give it more thought. The wood energy tends to get lumped in with the earth energy for developing a strong frame. The fire energy tends to get almost no attention, whatsoever, except in very specific branches.

Focusing on element qualities can be a viable form of practice in Taiji Quan, but that mindset is more like and possibly an influence from Xingyi Quan. Otherwise it is more normal for Taiji Quan practitioners to focus more attention on their version of the eight gates (ba gua), instead.

Xingyi Quan uses the five elements metaphorically to represent ideally five different energies, but energy work is subtle, so normally one starts out learning five basic techniques with complementary footwork to teach the basic concepts behind the energies. Ideally one can use any technique with any kind of energy, but there are different levels of skill one must go through.

In Xingyi Quan, realization of the five energies has three basic levels: Obvious power, subtle power, mysterious power.

• Obvious power is where the shape of the body is large and gives indication as to how the power is being generated.
• Subtle power is the more refined version where the movement to generate the power is very small and there is no excess motion.
• Mysterious power is when there is little to no perceptible motion, but it causes a large reaction anyway.

Another way of looking at the three levels involve the name of the style itself, 'Shape Intent Fist'.

• Basic level: the body shape changes, but the shape of the intent does not. This is the technique level, and power cannot be generated without moving in some way.
• Intermediate level: the body shape and intent change proportionally and in harmony with each other. Small moves cause large surges of power that affect the opponent.
• Advanced level: the shape of the intent changes, but the shape of the body is unaffected. Any posture can be assumed while maintaining power. Ideally, different forms of power can be emitted without moving or changing position at all.

A third method of looking at the skill development of Xingyi Quan has to do with its power training.

• Ligong. Strength Training. This is building raw muscle power. Traditional Xingyi Quan rather infamously goes through very strenuous physical exercise to develop a strong body, capable of emitting raw power.
• Jinggong. Power Training. This is building skill and body coordination to use more subtle forms of trained power using specific body mechanics.
• Neigong, Internal training. The primary form of internal training in Xingyi Quan is post standing exercise Zhuanggong. One stands in place, assuming a basic posture, all the physical and internal alignments are taught and put into action. Then one stands for a long time holding the posture, trying to feel and manifest the sort of power of each element.

Wuxing Tongbei Quan is a style intermediate between Taiji Quan and Tongbei Quan which uses five element theory as well.

The Five Animals in Shaolin martial arts are also sometimes know as the Wuxing as their qualities parallel the five phases:

• Tiger - Fire (fierce and powerful)
• Monkey - Metal (hunched over)
• Snake - Water (flexible)
• Crane - Wind (evasive)
• Mantis - Earth (steady and rooted)

Gogyo Aikido (五行合气道) is a life art with roots in Confucian, Taoists and Buddhist theory. It centers around applied peace and health studies rather than defence or physical action. It emphasizes the unification of mind, body and environment using the physiological theory of yin, yang and five-element Traditional Chinese medicine. Its movements, exercises, and teachings cultivate, direct, and harmonise the qi.^[18]

The Japanese term is gogyo (Japanese:五行, romanized: gogyō). During the 5th and 6th centuries (Kofun period),^[27] Japan adopted various philosophical disciplines such as Taoism, Chinese Buddhism and Confucianism through monks and physicians from China helping to evolve the Onmyōdō system. As opposed to theory of Godai that is form based philosophy that was introduced to Japan through India and Tibetan Buddhism.^[28] These theories have been extensively practiced in Japanese acupuncture and traditional Kampo medicine.^[29][30]

• Acupuncture
• Classical element
• Color in Chinese culture
• Flying Star Feng Shui
• Humorism
• Qi
• Wuxing painting
• Zangfu
• Yin and yang

• Feng Youlan (Yu-lan Fung), A History of Chinese Philosophy, volume 2, p. 13
• Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, volume 2, pp. 262–23.
• Maciocia, G. (2005). The Foundations of Chinese Medicine (2nd ed.). London: Elsevier Ltd.
• Chen, Yuan (2014). "Legitimation Discourse and the Theory of the Five Elements in Imperial China". Journal of Song-Yuan Studies. 44: 325–364. doi:10.1353/sys.2014.0000. S2CID 147099574.

• Wuxing (Wu-hsing). The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ISSN 2161-0002.